Presidental Election 2024 in the USA: Electoral Shift in Bipartisanship Crisis

The election of the American President reflects all the difficulties of the transition period which the country's political system has entered as a mirror. At the center of the systemic transformation is the two-party organization of the political process. Throughout of U.S. history, bipartisanship has been a guarantor of stability and relative predictability of the country’s political development. The two parties have traditionally been adaptive and flexible enough to, on the one hand, structure society and government, and, on the other, quickly respond to changing mood of the electorate and to socio-economic developments in society. Elections in such a system appeared to be a routine and predictable transfer of power. However, in 2000, predictability came to an abrupt end. The presidential elections began to show clear signs of deep socio-political changes that no longer fit into the two-party system framework. Since 2016, the obviousness of these changes is no longer in doubt. The purpose of this article is to use the example of the 2024 election campaign to identify key changes occurring in the American electorate that reflect the degradation of the two-party political system. The authors examine current changes in the party preferences of various social groups that have emerged during the current election campaign, the significance of ‘swing states’ in a polarized political environment, and the programs of both political parties presented at respective national conventions this summer. The article analyzes the electoral shift between the parties, which began in 2016, and is likely to continue in the 2024 elections. At the center of this shift are two social groups – the white working class and ethnic minorities – that have become the main focus of the struggle between Democrats and Republicans in the current elections. The authors come to the conclusion that the U.S. political system is gradually moving towards a search for a new equilibrium formula, elements of which are only beginning to appear in the current processes.